I think my absolute favorite in that warning is the fact that they had to SPECIFY “non-edible” baby. Quite frankly not much in the world is truly “non-edible”. I mean heck, almost anything you put in your mouth can be eaten and hence rendered edible….they could have just put “Plastic” baby or “small ceramic baby inside cake poses choking hazard”….

Mmmm king cake. Back when we lived in New Orleans, my family really celebrated mardi gras and we would get a king cake every year. My brother and I would try to cheat and figure out where the baby was by pressing down on the cake to see if we could feel it. So our cake was always terribly mutilated.

Now that I think about it, being that eager to bite into a naked plastic baby is kind of weird.

Shade, king cake is one of the traditional foods of Mardi Gras. Every store and bakery here in New Orleans has their own version (and I hear they have them over in Mobile, too). King cakes typically aren’t really like cake at all, they’re drier and more pastry-like, though some bakeries make them really moist and more doughnut-like.

Plain king cakes have cinnamon swirls, and you can get them filled with just about anything – cream cheese, fruit fillings, even chocolate. They’re topped with white icing and sprinkles in Carnival (Rex) colors – purple, green, and gold. Every king cake has a small plastic baby in it.

In time past (and still in some societies today), the king or queen of next year’s carnival was decided by serving the cake, and whoever got the piece with the golden bean (now baby) was the next royalty. Nowadays the lucky partygoer who finds the baby has to bring a cake to the next party.

It gets better: the baby is baby Jesus.
No really. The king cake tradition is for Mardi Gras in the States, but the baby comes from the Christmasness of similar cakes used to celebrate Epiphany in parts of France.
Also, you used to be king for the day in those celebrations if you bit the baby/coin/bean/whatever was inside… I think I’d rather be king for the day than king of the crewe for a Mardi Gras.

The cake is a lie is a reference to the video game Portal in which the players are told they will be rewarded for their tasks with cake. They are ostensibly testing technology for apeture science, and the testing is at best extremely risky. I died 8billion times, but it is an amazing puzzle game that comes packaged with some other games. The rest of the weird jokes are from the lyrics to the closing song of the game.

Anybody else get paczki yesterday? They are pretty much baby donuts when you consider the tiresome rundown of how many calories they have and how many hours of x, y, or z you would have to do to “burn them off.” They are the evil food of February around these parts. Suddenly an item that is only available for a few days once a year is responsible for the Obesity Epidemic.

Didn’t stop normal people from lining up around the block to buy dozens, of course. God forbid you should have fun with food traditions and enjoy life.

This is fascinating. About the only people in the UK now who have a Twelfth Cake (as they call it here, because they still do it on Jan 6th) are the actors at the Drury Lane Theatre. I had no idea it was part of Mardi Gras.

Sadly, I don’t think you’d get away with a non-edible choking hazard baby over here. Too many health and safety regs. Pancakes are our thing for the season, but they reckon pancake racing is dying out because well, you know, tossing a pancake around….you’ll have someone’s eye out with that! That’s before you even get to OMGSATURATEDFAT…

And I should be cribbing off of these dudes for my currently-running game of The Superest (mine is not nearly as awesome as the link). I just drew a guy with almost exactly that pancake’s mouth, only not half as good.

I was actually looking for packzi (The Wife is of Polish descent) when I found the king cake in question. Given the amusement this photo has provided it is too bad I don’t have a high res photo – just a camera phone one.

Hee hee hee…good thing you’re not from Mobile, Tricia, or we’d have a problem here ;-) Yeah, technically, Mobile started Carnival and many of the traditions, including king cake, but we’ve improved on ‘em ;)

I’ve never heard of a packzi before in my life, and I’m 1/4 Polish! In what part of the country is that traditional February food? Why?

Fillyjonk – you had drinks with Jonathan Coulton?! I am SO jealous! My code monkey husbadnd just introduced me to his music, and hilarity has ensued. I wrote him a geeky fan email and he replied, nice guy.

obscure food history!
portal references!
Jonathon Coulton!
who, i might add was nice enough NOT to run away screaming when i told him his presence was what actually got me to attend PAX this year. upon reflection, i had just spent a not small chunk of change at his booth at the time.

I like to think that the wee baby is there to eat his/her way out of the cake, eventually becoming edible once the whole cake is consumed and they break free of the cumbersome bonds of cardboard packaging…I mean, it has to be where chubby babies come from, right?

I am not too familiar with the origins of paczki or how widespread they are, but I have heard some indications that they might be sort of a regional Michigan (or maybe Midwest) thing. But that might just be our local media trying to co-opt them, I’m not sure.

Either way, IMO you can’t go wrong with delicious donuts filled with everything from typical doughnutty stuff like raspberry or lemon or custard, to prune and apricot (which I think are considered the more traditional paczki filling). Though I know there are plenty out there who do not appreciate the prune as I do. :)

I went to Hamtramck (a traditionally Polish suburb of Detroit) to get mine this year on a pretty much unanimous ruling that the best ones are to be gotten there. I don’t fuck around when it comes to donuts (after all, I’m a fatty, right?), so I wanted the best. And I have to say, it was worth it, though you can also get them at pretty much any grocery store around here.

Anyway, all that to say that I am in no way Polish (I just like to ride the coattails of any donut-related custom) so I’m not sure to what extent paczki are traditional outside of this area.